One of the longest running climate prediction blunders has disappeared from the Internet

Readers of WUWT and millions of climate skeptics have read this article before, and in fact it is likely one of the most cited articles ever that illustrates the chutzpah and sheer hubris on display from a climate scientist who was so certain he could predict the future with certainty. Dr. David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit who famously said:

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

It seems however, that after over 15 years, the Independent has removed that article, and the URL now comes up like this:

Here is what it originally looked like:

Fortunately, I have preserved the entire article as a PDF for posterity:

One wonders about the timing, whether it is related to the upcoming COP21 climate confab in Paris, or if it was simply some blunder, oversight, or archive purge on the part of The Independent.

Note: I owe a hat tip to a WUWT reader, whose email/comment seems to be lost in the firehose of communications I get daily. If you are reading, leave a note in comments and I’ll correct this. The reader was Cole Pritchard, who sent the info to my phone via IM, Thanks Cole.

193 thoughts on “One of the longest running climate prediction blunders has disappeared from the Internet”

I have a slight OT question about the sea ice. Having seen the spread of the last couple of years for Arctic Ice was the 1979 to 1985 period anomalously high? Are we looking at the wrong end of the telescope?

…
… Since 1972 the grain crisis has intensified…. Since 1969 the storage of grain has decreased from 600 million metric tons to less than 100 million metric tons – a 30 day supply… many governments have gone to great lengths to hide their agricultural predicaments from other countries as well as from their own people…
pg 9
The archaeologists and climatotologists document a rather grim history… There is considerable evidence that these empires may not have been undone by barbarian invaders but by climatic change…. has tied several of these declines to specific global cool periods, major and minor, that affected global atmospheric circulation and brought wave upon wave of drought to formerly rich agricultural lands.
Refugees from these collapsing civilizations were often able to migrate to better lands… This would be of little comfort however,… The world is too densely populated and politically divided to accommodate mass migration….The Wisconsin analysis questions whether a return to these climate conditions could support a population that has grown from 1.1 billion in 1850 to 3.75 billion in 1970. The Wisconsin group predicted that the climate could not support the world’s population since technology offers no immediate solution. Further world grain reserves currently amount to less than one month; thus any delay in supplies implies mass starvation. They also contended that new crop strains could not be developed over night… Moreover they observed that agriculture would become even more energy dependent in a world of declining resources.

We may already be in a cooling phase. When doing the work for my article Proof: recent temperature trends are not abnormal there was no evidence for any abnormality in the climate except on a 50-60 year time-scale. This could still be random variation, or it could be a cycle. Since then I’ve seen a couple of indications of a 60 year cycle in data and a strong relationship between AMO and glaciers (again on a 60 year cycle). If true, then the peak of the cycle should have occurred around 2010 and if so, we may see a sharp cooling trend after the El Nino ends (next year).
However, added to that is the sunspot cycle. I’m convinced there’s a connection, but not convinced by some of the wilder claims about the extent of the connection. However, that would suggest cooling as well. Rising CO2, now looks like a very insignificant part of climate and I’m beginning to think changes in forestry and land use are a greater impact even than CO2. These however suggest warming. So, I wouldn’t bet my house on cooling, but if anyone wanted to bet a Mid winter swim in the Forth in Scotland – I might go for it.

Sea ice variations have recently attracted much public interest. Part of the reason for this is the high albedo (c. 80%) of sea ice, which reflects much of the incoming solar short-wave radiation during the summer time. If not reflected, this radiation may instead be consumed by warming ocean water, thereby initiating a positive feedback, leading to more warming. This simple analysis however ignores that evaporation will increase from the ocean when the total sea ice cover are reduced in size. Increased evaporation usually results in an increased cloud cover and increased reflectance of incoming solar radiation, which tend to counteract the above process. The decrease or increase of sea ice has no effect on the global sea level.

Professor Ole Humlum
(here: http://climate4you.com/ (if this link goes to Home and not to Sea Ice page, click on Sea Ice on left menu, then click on “Arctic Sea Ice Area and Thickness” — Latest update to site: November 11, 2015)

Note to Anthony & Moderators & everyone else – the “wayback machine” (or “web archive”) can also be used to resurrect pages and even see when they were modified. The Independent snow prediction article is here, for example: http://web.archive.org/web/20150723090103/http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html It’s a very handy way to prove beyond doubt not only that a page existed, but exactly what it’s content was at what time frame.
The site shows every single day the page was crawled and archived over years – just click on the “capture” timeline for the year you’re interested in, and a calendar will pop up showing every time it was captured during that year… then click on whichever day you want and the page as it was on that day will come up.

The ability to predict the future for certain, brings with it the necessary information to circumvent the possibility of that future event happening.
Ergo it cannot be possible to predict the future for certain.
g

I have the wayback machine address somewhere, saved on a previous post.
I’ll be back in a minute with the wayback archive.
And yes, deleting the article was completely pathetic behaviour.
The commissar vanishes, once again!!!

No doubt Tom Bawden is involved … the berk just pushed this garbage out about ££££ billions ££££ in “subsidies for fossil fuels”.
The sooner Boris Berezofsky tires of his increasingly stupid and unhinged dead tree Chihuahua and has it put down the better.

Adding to what you said, and it’s a pet peeve of mine-is that fossil fuel companies (and thousands of other companies) by and large receive tax breaks, not subsidies- though they receive some. They’re two different things, though the media constantly uses the same term for both. A subsidy, by definition, is the government giving money to an individual or company so as to become viable. A tax break let’s you keep more of what was already yours- nobody is “giving” anything to anybody. Solar and wind receive “subsides”, which is money from the government. Fossil fuel (and you and I) receive mostly tax breaks.

JL as a farmer I represent(sic) that. Much of what is called “subsidies” is depreciation allowances. In years past, you may have heard of “sinking funds” which were intended to allow a person to replace equipment as it wore out. People who use “equipment” to earn income are allowed to depreciate the equipment at rates given by government mandate on the basis that it has a declining value because of time and use. Oil companies are also allowed to depreciate their reservoirs as they are used up and their “assets” decline. That isn’t a subsidy. If you were doing a “cash” business, you would subtract the whole of your asset purchases in the year of purchase offsetting your Income, perhaps making it negative. But government doesn’t like that so they set rules for depreciation along with Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) though Tax rules and GAAP rules do not always go together resulting in two sets of income statements, one for Tax, and one for GAAP. Not usually an issue for individuals or small companies but corporations must be aware of the rules and differences.
With resource industries it can be a bit more complicated than the above, but that is the general idea.
The media and small activists generally don’t get it (or pretend they don’t) though the people running big greens most certainly do.

You are ignoring that the value they declare the property for becomes a base that the city, county, state etc. can tax them for. Kind of hard to declare that it is not worth that much when they use that for its value for there tax write off. Thus YOU pay les city, county, state property taxes.
Further, regardless of what the taxes are – YOU, the CONSUMER always pay the taxes. PERIOD. you may think they pay the taxes BUT YOU are giving them the money to pay the taxes. Why do so many people have trouble understanding that extremely simple fact.

Those tax breaks are also the same as those for any other primary resource extraction business. Whether it’s “evil oil” or “good germanium” they are the same thing.
When you go the route of these people – well, just how much is the government “subsidizing” GE by letting them take depreciation for their wind turbine manufacturing equipment? Or the wind farms depreciating those turbines once they are installed? Let’s eliminate those “subsidies” too, eh?

I found a copy without much trouble at the https://archive.org/: Regretably link-rot is a pretty common phenomenon. A lot of it appears to be unintentional. And, worse, some sites aren’t archived by the internet archive site because of the robots.txt file or other issues. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot Overall, dead-links are so common that it’s had to ascribe any given broken link to malice.

LInk rot is, as you say, common. I have written some 15 climate articles and none of the earlier ones still have 100% of their links remaining. I suspect this is such an occurrence or just a housekeeping matter.
The original story did get a little distorted in the telling and sceptics and alarmists alike have had their own take on the matter.
Desmogblog gave their version of events here, quoting a delingpole article into the bargain.
Worth readinghttp://www.desmogblog.com/2013/04/04/climate-science-denier-james-delingpole-calls-alarmists-face-court-death-penalty-powers
However, there is a wider story here which is that regular snowfall is not a common occurrence in lowland Britain, although more common in the North of the country and East Anglia (where CRU is located) The image of snowy winters is largely an artefact of folk memories of the harsh conditions of the intermittent little ice age. Charles Dickens’ formative years were in such a cold period and some years ago I wrote a tongue in cheek article that highlighted the actual lack of snow-especially around Christmas. It is here and was entitled
“Has Charles Dickens shaped our perception of climate change?
Charles Dickens. Victorian winters. A Christmas Carol. Ice fairs on the Frozen Thames. Cold Cold Cold Cold Cold. Dickens has irrevocably moulded the climate views of generations of Anglo Saxon peoples as TV, Films and plays all promote his image of icy winters in that era. Is this view of Dickens winters correct? We take a look at his life through the prism of climate.https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/bah-humbug/
——- ——- ——-
So Did David Viner say something that seems to have been distorted in time? Yes, probably. Has snow been such a frequent occurrence in lowland Britain, that its demise is worthy of especial note. No. Other than during periodic harsh spells, snow events come and go and were especially lacking in modern times during the 1930’s and 1940’s
tonyb

David Viner didn’t qualify his statement at all. He didn’t say a thing about the children of “lowland Britain” not knowing what snow was. He said ………..”within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event. …….Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,”………
And even the children of “lowland Britiain” have seen snow according to the met.http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/snow/snow-in-the-uk

“Failed predictions are rapidly vanishing from internet servers”
If failed predictions vanish, there will not be any climate “science” left on the internet!
Climate “scientists” will be a thing of the past.

It is basically impossible to “disappear ” something from the internet.
Once you put it out there , it will be there forever.
And will usually come back to bite you at a most inconvenient time.
Oh and Streisand Effect

Individuals, in European Law, have the ‘right to be forgotten’. This is implemented by search engines failing to return results from pages the individual wishes to be removed. The content remains but you have to know the URL to find it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
This is not what has happened in this case but many people have used this right.

“Forgotten” is perhaps not the best word; Lost or Not Found are a better description. You cannot (I don’t think) have stuff removed from the web, just that search engines are not allowed to provide links to it.

(I hope TheWayBackMachine has been backed up!)
The content owner can demand that the WayBack machine delete its copies. I’ve seen this done before.
We need a “Real” Wayback machine where you cannot delete embarrassing predictions. Perhaps Anthony should add a whole page with cached links.
Peter

It’s too late. This already looks like stage-managing of the “official reality”, in the Soviet style.
The best policy would have been to leave the page, as a symbol of an age of monstrous delusions.
Now, it looks like they tried to make it go away.
Independent – my arse!!!!

Thus, the Envirostalinist-sympathetic Independent, places itself, once again, in the classiest of company.
Here’s how two of the Windmill and Solar Profiteers’ Top 10 Most Admired People did it:
“… extreme regimes” and erasing history
(youtube)

This stuff has been going on for some time. For US centric readers, look at the (now erased except on Wayback) climate difference by state between the previous NOAA (2013) Drd964x and the ‘new, improved’ 2014 nClimDiv. The archived before and afters for three states — California, Michigan, and Maine — plus the aggregate statistics are provided as just one small part of this issue in essay When Data Isn’t in my newest ebook. There is much more referenced evidence in that essay globally, all equally damning. Sulina? de Bilt? Rutherglen? BEST station 166900 (ok, that one only in footnote 24 to make a separate methodological error point to Mosher and friends, so you all can skip it at your peril — since tracking footnotes is not blog fun).

Found similar in EPA study where it showed no change in heating and cooling days in last 100+ years. Data remained in the report but shrunk to where it couldn’t be read. When I tried to print the specific pages ie asked for page 54 that was the only page that could not be printed. EPA thought that historic data would support their warming crap and when I found it I printed it Quickly before they could delete it. Instead of deleting they buried it in a report where I couldn’t print a new copy. Still may be available at Dept of Energy Information but not from EPA.
Max

Mods – sorry if this is a repost – original appears to have gone awry.
I have found on Google cache a collection of sitemap.xml files, broken down by year and month e.g. for March 2003:http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7Y32nLOU_10J:www.independent.co.uk/independent.co.uk/sitemap/sitemap_200003.xml.gz+&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=fr
It appears to list urls of all the articles, including the Snowfall article in question. Every link I have tried from that list is coming up “Not found”.
Furthermore, more sitemaps can be found with this query:
site:www.independent.co.uk sitemap 1999
Now, trying August 1999 – file 199908 – all these come up, but all datestamps on the pages themselves are October 23 2011, so I reckon there’s some archiving/republication happened there.
Anyways, it’s all of March 2000 that’s missing at the moment, and January 2003, and November 2005.
So, more a bulk purge, perhaps reformatting old articles?

Oh, I don’t think so, Miss Mellie (although your generous spirit is admirable).
I think the Enviroprofiteers (wind and solar industry, mostly) are just desperate to rehabilitate their “expert” witness’ credibility, here.
After all, you can’t have your
“principal advisor for climate change”** known for being one of the biggest ignoramuses in The United Kingdom…
** Mott MacDonald has appointed Dr David Viner as principal advisor for climate change. An internationally recognised expert, David brings with him 20 years of experience working in the area of climate change. …
Mott MacDonald’s environment manager Ian Allison said: “We are delighted to welcome David to Mott MacDonald. Sustainability and climate change are important drivers for our business… .” {<– lol, indeed:
"Harnessing wind energy through developing onshore and offshore wind farms is a major area where we have a particularly strong track record." Source: https://www.mottmac.com/industry/industrial-infrastructure . }
Source: https://www.mottmac.com/article/614/mott-macdonald-appoints-dr-david-viner-as-pri

Just follow the money (Viner, “expert,” still hustling for Mott MacDonald as of December, 2014):
“Dr David Viner from Mott MacDonald says that the hydropower industry cannot ignore climate change. In order for hydropower schemes to be climate resilient over their entire planned lifetime, he says that climate change needs to be at the forefront of design, feasibility, construction, operation and maintenance.”
Source: http://www.waterpowermagazine.com/opinion/opinionmaking-hydropower-resilient-to-climate-change-4462635/

And here, on August 12, 2015,
is David Viner in a more subtle role using Linked In to push Mott MacDonald’s “important drivers for our business [, sustainability and climate change]” (Ian Allison, Mott MacDonald in my comment at 5:59pm today):
“I need you help to give your views on the Climatescope online tool … Mott MacDonald is undertaking a survey … Climatescope is a global index aimed at helping private sector developers, their consultants, governments and research bodies decide where to invest in Clean energy … .”
By David Viner
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/survey-climatescope-clean-energy-investment-tool-david-viner?articleId=6037208072106053632
**************************
Conclusion: Mott MacDonald’s “expert” is undergoing preventive maintenance.

Perhaps someone should write to The Independent and ask them about their IT housekeeping policy.
Have all stories older than 15 years been deleted.? Or is the deletion of articles selective, and if so what forms the selection process?

Published in the year 2000, I thought maybe the story was just too old, and the Independent simply removed the story to save archive space, or maybe this had to do with some site redesign and the URL simply got broken. Yet when I remove the quote marks to search for the phrase in general, and not exactly, other stories back as far as 1994 about global warming and snow appear: …
(from above-posted article by Anthony Watts)
Appears to selective.

Janice
Since this is not a scientific article, I only quickly scanned it, and obviously missed the reference of back to 1994. At first glance, the deletion therefore appears to be part of some selective process as you suggest.

Dear Richard Verney,
I hope you realize that I was only informing you, not trying to cast aspersions on your intelligence. Your fine mind has repeatedly demonstrated on WUWT that you are a fine information analyst. If my tone was offensive, please forgive me. Remember, others likely scanned the article quickly and missed that information, also, so, your comment ended up helping others, too!
If you are in Scotland, in that snowstorm, keep warm and add an extra pat of butter to your oatmeal in the morning 🙂 (i.e., fat = warm). And two extra spoonfuls of brown sugar! <– ONLY because it tastes good….!
#(:))
Take care,
Janice

>>It seems hardly likely they are attempting to
>>cover up a blunder after 15 years.
It may well be that Independent staff had forgotten all about it. if you inhabit Warmist Fantasist sites, and never read the Climate Realist sites, you may never have seen this article for years. It is more likely that someone at the Independent inadvertently dialed into WUWT, and was shocked by what heshe saw.
R

TonyL, you are a nice guy. But, you know, this children not ever seeing snow again is, I would say, an iconic representation of the hysterics of CAGW proponents that will live on in the future. It will be a cautionary tale for future development of science and science teaching. It will rank up there with the ‘black swan’. It will become a metaphor for the whole debacle of this 30yr (plus, perhaps another 5yrs) period. The ‘disappearing’ itself, which shows that the Independent is having a tougher time cleaving to the narrative and doesn’t want to have such an iconic blunder under it’s name, will ironically highlight it and cement it into the history of shocking times. Is Viner still publishing stuff? I suspect he has either greatly reduced or stopped his output or piled the old stuff under hundreds of more recent, more thoughful papers.

Meanwhile new daft predictions are popping up every day. Like this one from Nature:
“The results provide a clear, stark message: if we assume that the Amundsen Glacier is indeed destabilized, which current evidence suggests, then the entire Western ice sheet will discharge into the ocean within 3000 years, leading to a 3 meter rise in sea level within 10,000 years. This extreme loss is due to a ‘point-of-no-return’ scenario: once the grounding line begins retreating, ice will continue to melt inland, allowing water to carve a path inward until it breaks off the whole western sheet.
It is true that this process unfolds over a very long time period, giving us plenty of time to respond if this scenario does occur. But the world would look quite different. In the US alone, 12.3 million people would lose their homes.”
12.3million people who currently live in coastal areas will lose their homes in 10,000 years.
So this is Nature? A journal which prints material which is so embarrassingly idiotic that I couldn’t create a satire that was more bizarrely stupid than the original.
Do people now enter climate science direct from Kindergarten?
From: http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/eyes-on-environment/shortterm_stability_and_longterm_collapse

In Nature’s defense, this looks like a blog rather than part of the journal itself, I’m not sure blogs are refereed at all.
But it’s still a great find. I loved the part about the model being “complicated”. I used to do a fair amount of computer modeling (as have many folks who visit this site apparently). It never ceases to amaze me that climate researchers treat their models as reality or that casual readers of articles like this one seem happy to suspend disbelief while reading them. I suppose people like to read disaster stories, who would be intrigued to discover the latest climate models suggest everything’s going to be peachy for the foreseeable future? Doesn’t make good diner conversation.

We had to wait only one day for a real disaster. The imaginary 10,000 year event discusses here seems somehow even more non-existent than yesterday.
I must stop looking at this rubbish.
I feel that fools are wasting my time. 🙂

From: Phil Jones <...@uea.ac.uk>
To: <Michael Mann> ...@virginia.edu
Subject: Fwd: John L. Daly dead
Date: Thu Jan 29 14:17:01 2004
From: Timo Hämeranta <...@pp.inet.fi>
To: <...@pp.inet.fi>
Subject: John L. Daly dead
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:04:28 +0200
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.4510
Importance: Normal
Mike,
In an odd way this is cheering news ! One other thing about the CC paper - just found
another email - is that McKittrick says it is standard practice in Econometrics journals
to give all the data and codes !! According to legal advice IPR overrides this.
Cheers
Phil
"It is with deep sadness that the Daly Family have to announce the sudden death of John
Daly.Condolences may be sent to John's email account (daly@john-daly.com)
"
Reported with great sadness
Timo Hämeranta
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Well, I read the entire thing. It is wrong about the snow. It is wrong about the 0.2C/decade. It is roughly right about the +0.6C warming. It is correct that AGW is manifesting itself primarily in the winter. The sensationalization gets it a downcheck.-
I therefore give it a D. A middle-of-the-road D.

So who are we to believe? For a final word, I turned to the greatest climate change scientist of all, Dr David Viner, one-time senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia, who predicted in 2000 that, within a few years, winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event”.
However, he was trapped under a glacier in Stockport, so was unable to comment at the time the Telegraph went to press.

The “big scary words” article is a classic. A brief excerpt:
“I asked Stephen Belcher, the head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, whether the recent extended winter was related to global warming. Shaking his famous ‘ghost stick’, and fingering his trademark necklace of sharks’ teeth and mammoth bones, the loin-clothed Belcher blew smoke into a conch, and replied,
‘Here come de heap big warmy….'”
Follow clipe’s link for the rest.

Not right now, thanks. I’m eating lunch, and forcibly ejecting a ham and cheese sandwich via my nostrils is not on my bucket list. Later, when oxygen is available for recovery from uncontrollable laughter.

Every time it snowed where I live I would take a picture and tweet it along with a link to “Snow Is A Thing of the Past”.
( @protonice )
I should take a picture of todays rain and tweet it along with a link to “Dry Weather Today is a pimple Compared to the Dry Weather we are going to get”, published a few months ago in The Vancouver Sun.

Gary – LOL. Yes 2015 had a dastardly dry summer, a dastardly wet fall. SNAFU. When I went to UBC from the dry interior in 1966, my car didn’t dry out for 8 months (ie when I left Vancouver and went back to the interior). That fall set the record at the time for continuous days of rainfall.

Well, I missed that weather by one year as I moved to the Vancouver region the following year, Halloween 1967. Summers have always been hot and dry and in fact it was May of this year that was the driest on record that isn’t even a summer month, and the record of 51 or 54 days without rain was not broken this year.
This morning the rainfall since Sept 1 has been 355 mm while the average is 300 mm. I highly doubt that next may will be even near as dry as this past may.
Last October (2014) give or take a month saw 150 mm instead of the average 100 mm, but none of the alarmist reports about the dry weather mentioned this and instead cherry picked months.
The dry weather was hyped by alarmists hear as being a result of climate change.
The wind storm on the last weekend of August, that wasn’t even predicted half an hour before it occurred has been hyped by alarmists :
“Although the windstorm is now over, the freshly battered Metro Vancouver’s situation has been suggested to be a sign of worse weather to come. Climate change scientists have been asserting that more extreme weather like this will become commonplace if the global warming continues without sufficient regulation,” — The Peak – Student Newspaper of Simon Fraser, September 8, 2015, page 5.
Note, the temperatures were below normal during the wind storm compared to the wind storm of 2006 where Stephen Hume wrote about the 68% above normal temperatures using his special Celsius physics. No mention what the temperatures were during the great wind storm of 1934 in this region.

I forgot to mention, just a couple of years ago or so during a cold wet spring it was declared that this is the weather climate scientists say will be the new norm. This would wreck havoc with our tourism industry so it was written. No mater the weather, wet or dry, it’s climate changes fault, and these declarations also don’t re-appear when the predictions don’t pan out.
Note, I wrote hear above when I meant here. knotty me, I should have read what I wrote before submitting. I have been having trouble sleeping since Turdeau has been anointed king of Canada and now I hear Dion stating that climate change is to be the top concern of all the cabinet ministers of the land. Sickening.

As a disclaimer – I don’t really care all that much whether the Independent did this on purpose.
I just like drawing lots of attention to how completely stupid the media, media “experts”.
And attention to the fact that looney alarmist predictions are invariably further from reality than a random guess. The nitwits have learned though, I suppose. Inasmuch as they now couch alarmism in vague and often meaningless conditional terms. They only make solid prediction about events that will NOT occur after their retirement or death.
The odd idiot breaks free from the climate alarm asylum and further empties his mind in the presence of a journalist. In which case we get to witness the joyous spectacle of a once proud believer losing his marbles.
As has now happened with poor Mr Viner.
(I have removed his title – for his own benefit!! It was only doing him harm.)

The odd idiot breaks free from the climate alarm asylum and further empties his mind in the presence of a journalist. In which case we get to witness the joyous spectacle of a once proud believer losing his marbles.
I see what you did there! You’re referring to Professor ‘Arctic will be ice free in 2015’ Peter Wadhams aren’t you?

It’s called ‘Climastrology’,in the past we had ‘Spiritualism’ ‘tea leave readers’ ‘seances’ ‘astrologists’ ‘ouija board readers’ ‘tarot card readers’ all sucking money from the gulible,
It seems that Governments have seen the potential for sucking money from the ‘Gulible’ and gone along with ‘Climastrology’.
In the future people will look back and laugh at the stupidity of people paying for ‘Climastrological’ predictions.

I suspect as the scheme implodes and members of the Cult of Calamitous Climate are deprogrammed by cold weather and angry impoverished taxpayers.
The records of their gullibility here on the internet will come under serious attack.
The US Democrats are already on the record wanting to control(regulate) the web and so is the UN.
Strange how people who campaign for immunity from prosecution also want to control the history.

I don’t know if there is any deliberate action being taken here, but that’s not, IMHO, what we should be discussing. What we should be discussing is how to preserve the original article for easy reference now that the original is gone. I know A_thony linked to his copy in this article, but at some future point, I’ll forget where that was. Future being about 48 hours for me…..
Perhaps a special link in the WUWT sidebar?

Disappearing Failed Climate Predictions..
‘If your doom and gloom predictions fail to materialize, we will make them go away and restore your credibility..’
Sounds like a dang RON.CO commercial.. For just 49.99 we will make your past failed predictions Viner! (Oh wait.. that should say ‘VANISH’… my bad 🙂
Welcome to the New World Order.. Ignore those failed predictions behind the curtain….
Nothing that is happening prior to Paris is surprising me and I set that bar very low. Makes me wonder if Viner is giving a speech?

Ah, the Internet.
Once it goes up, guys, you ain’t never getting it suppressed.

Earlier this summer, a group of “scientists” led by a couple of US government employees, published an utterly fraudulent paper which, in effect, erased the decline in global surface temperatures. They did this by the rather elegant method of simply changing the recorded temperatures to something else.
…
This is just another example of the utter lawlessness that has infected the Executive Branch agencies under Barack Obama. The only exception to providing agency documents to the Congress is executive privilege. There is no special privilege available for the political hacks masquerading as scientists in NOAA. This has been hashed out thoroughly since Watergate. The only question is whether Smith, as a committee chairman, can make his demand stick. The agency is refusing Smith’s request for one reason: they know this action they have taken is in support of Obama’s political agenda.
…
The more we know about how NOAA, and the climate change (snip) funded by NOAA, operate the more it is apparent that the entire field is fraudulent up to its myopic eyeballs and exists solely to suck cash out of the federal government and to arrogate power and importance to a lot of very little and inconsequential men whose inadequate personal lives make them want to lord it over the rest of us.

Oh, THANK YOU, Mike (who is most certainly not a) Morlock. That Tucci — NEVER acknowledges my attempts to have a little fun with him. How nice of you to take the time.
Heh. Glad you got a smile out of that.
#(:))

I woke up last night with a wicked idea. I thought wouldn’t it be fun to start a rumor about the Paris shindig? I mean, well since they don’t like “new ice” and don’t think it’s as good as old ice, why not put out a story that the organizers are importing ancient ice for the delegate’s mixed drinks. Their standing in the pecking order at the conference would reflect which geological era their ice came from. All sorts of stories as intrigues could and would take on a life of their own. Sigh I laughed until my sides hurt.
Since I retired I fear I have to much free time.
michael

I woke up last night with a wicked idea. I thought wouldn’t it be fun to start a rumor about the Paris shindig. I mean, well, since they don’t like “new ice” and don’t think it’s as good as old ice, why not put out a story that the organizers are importing ancient ice for the delegate’s mixed drinks. Their standing in the pecking order at the conference would reflect which geological era their ice came from. All sorts of stories as intrigues could and would take on a life of their own.

There is, of course, merit in this. Better yet, let us connive to deliver these quanta of “ancient ice” to the conference, carefully labeled.
D’you think Penn Jillette might like to get in on this gentle jest?

It’s a pretty stark analysis, and not without merit. There are plenty of climate change scientists who are equally forthright on the possibilities of change, or no change, and of more hot, or less hot, or of rain, or no rain, or of Britain turning into the Sahara by next weekend, or instead becoming a freezing cold Frostyworld ruled by a strange, glistening ice-queen – crucially, it all depends on the time of day you ask them, and whether or not they had asparagus the day before.
So who are we to believe? For a final word, I turned to the greatest climate change scientist of all, Dr David Viner, one-time senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia, who predicted in 2000 that, within a few years, winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event”.
However, he was trapped under a glacier in Stockport, so was unable to comment at the time the Telegraph went to press.

Accidenti! ???!
How do you mean this, Mr. Tucci? As in: “Che accidenti state facendo, you annoying woman??”
or “Accidenti, che bella comment!” ???
Well, thank you, at least, for taking the time to acknowledge it.

Italian-Americans of my generation grew up hearing it from our grandparents all the time, which is why it got laughs from those of us who were field-trip’d to see performances of Il barbiere di Siviglia in parochial school.

Not much of a question, Ms. Moore. Recall that you started this with your “TUUUUUUUUcci-co!” silliness (plainly not realizing that a “-co” word ending in such a context is not Italianate; more appropriate would’ve been “Tucci-o!” [employing the suffix “-uccio” meaning “small” or “little”] in emulation of the aria’s repeated call of “Figaro!”).
I replied – in clever parsimony – with the first word spoken in that opera buffa – which carries with it the connotation in the American language: “Damn!”

Driving truckloads of money out into the New Mexico desert and dumping it into a massive pit is one of America’s greatest traditions.

Dear Dr. Tucci,
I did not use the plain “o” suffix because I did not want to imply at all that you are a small man. To be perfectly candid, no, I was, indeed, ignorant of Italian, there — my conscious intent was simply to get a better rhyme parallel with Figaro, but used “c” instead of “g.”
Next time…. I will merrily sing out:

TUUUUUUUcci — go!!

I think I may have offended you and I regret that. I hope that you can forgive my having fun in such a silly way. We are ALLIES, you know! 🙂
Thank you for the education.
Janice

A. W. wrote: “>i>One wonders about the timing, whether it is related to …” etc.
The timing could be related to the fact that it is snowing – in Kansas, Colorado, Washington State, British Columbia, and ….
David Viner likely meant East Anglia but I don’t recall that was specified.

Hi, Janice.
Missed the bracket. Not the first time.
Years ago there were many comments where the person (maybe me) would fail to close the italics or bold and that might carry through for many of the following comments. The mods would usually fix it after letting us know what klutzes we were. Haven’t seen such in a long time so I guess that is automated now.
Can a blame it on being worn out?
I cut and split a bit of firewood for a needy neighbor today — wanting to get it under cover before the storm (now over the Strait of Juan de Fuca with rain reaching the Cascade Crest) gets here. Then I did my own chores and fixed supper. Nancy was doing a music thing (fiddle) with others at a rehab place. Only then did a check to see what was up here.
Best to you and anyone getting rain, snow, or cold tonight.

Dear John Hultquist,
What a guy. Thanks for chatting a little bit. My family and friends (in the Seattle –> Bellingham area) were a bit anxious yesterday about the storm headed their way. I hope that it blew itself out over the straits and wasn’t as bad as feared.
Take care and keep on fiddlin’!
Janice
P.S. I quoted your encouragement to me, a non-scientist, rather shy (oh, boy, THAT sure changed, heh) of commenting on WUWT, “You know things. Share.” with Monna Manhas who has been here awhile, but is quite reticent (so should LOTS of people, here). You see what a fine difference you make? Even the small things…. the ripples spread on and on. 🙂

I live in Somerset, England. And we have had numerous winters of astonishingly deep and beautiful snowfall. Some of the heaviest snowfalls I have ever seen have been in the last few years.
I have measured -17degC on one night. There was ice on the inside of my front door!!
There ain’t no – end of snow!!

“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” Ingsoc (Newspeak for English Socialism or the English Socialist Party) is the political ideology of the totalitarian government of Oceania in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

11 Nov: LA Times: ‘Everything is blinding white’: Huge Sierra snowstorm pays off for winter resorts
By Joseph Serna and Bettina Boxall
A massive storm that dropped snow across hundreds of miles of the Sierra Nevada is paying dividends for winter resorts, if social media is any indicator.
From Lake Tahoe and Mt. Rose to Mammoth Mountain, vacation destinations have taken to Twitter to boast that their slopes are ready for visitors…http://www.latimes.com/local/weather/la-me-ln-snow-storm-sierra-20151111-story.html

I’ve checked numerous times over the past few years to see if Viner’s totally embarrassing foot-in-mouth escapade is still there. I checked about two weeks ago and got the bad link message. Frankly, I was a bit surprised they’d left it up this long. It’s gone, David Viner, but don’t you worry. It will never be forgotten.

I would not be so quick to suggest anything odd here. Most sites that publish online articles archive those articles after a while, somewhere, as per policy. Sometimes online articles do get purged, again as per policy. It’s just good data “house keeping” practice to bin stuff no longer needed. But, yeah, seems to be a common theme now. Thank crunchie for the “waybackmachine”.

Saved the page long time ago, alexjc38 brilliant comment included, its very funny:
———————————
Calling Charles Onians
alexjc38 wrote:
Sunday, 27 December 2009 at 09:53 pm (UTC)
Hello? Charles Onians in 2000? Don’t ask me to explain but I’m posting this back to you via a time warp from December 2009. Yes, the future! You probably won’t believe me and will think I’m mad or joking, but get this. Britain is suffering its second extremely cold winter in a row – we have enough snow, ice, frost and freezing fog to cobble dogs with (whatever that means.) Far from being “a very rare and exciting event”, snowfall has become a major hazard in this country twice this past year – and we haven’t even got to February 2010 yet. Also (again you will probably think I’m joking) but the CRU has just become a liability to climate science – leaked e-mails and files have revealed a web of deceit and manipulation that threatens to undermine the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming itself. I urge you to pull this article immediately, as it will become a laughing stock in years to come. Charles? Hello? Hello? … Rats, I’m probably too late.

During the last couple of months, Accuweather web site stopped showing record temperatures of the past, as well as last year’s temperatures (at least for my neck of the woods).
It seems that there is a concerted cowardly secret effort in the mainstream media to confuse people about the weather as much as possible. As one of the heroes fighting bugs in “Starship Troopers” says near the end: “They are afraid!”

read all:
12 Nov: ABC America: AP: Seth Borenstein: CLIMATE COUNTDOWN: When’s a Warming Treaty Not a Treaty?
(Matthew Lee and Donna Cassata in Washington, Angela Charlton in Paris and Karl Ritter in Stockholm contributed to this report.)
It’s an issue of definitions and the way an agreement is framed, said Purvis, who is president of the non-governmental organization Climate Advisers.
The U.S. Constitution and the rest of the world have different definitions of the word “treaty,” Purvis said. Elsewhere, a treaty is a binding agreement. But in the U.S., there are several types of international agreements and only 6 percent of them end up being formal treaties that require Senate approval, he said. The last international, Senate-approved treaty was in 2010.
The climate treaty, Purvis said, is likely to end up as an “executive agreement” like the 1945 Yalta Accord at the end of World War II. This requires only presidential approval…
Purvis said it probably will hinge on a 1992 international treaty, signed by President George H.W. Bush and approved by the Senate, that promised to do something about climate change; a decades-old U.S. air pollution law; a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said the air pollution law applies to carbon dioxide; and presidential executive action…http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/climate-countdown-whens-warming-treaty-treaty-35165698

oddly this is an area where the warmest pathology really works against them , for has they hold that anything that enters the dogma of ‘the cause’ , cannot be challenged nor changed because its ‘perfect truth’ such as Mann hockey stick.
When it has been shown by overwhelming evidenced by nether ‘truth ‘ and a long way from ‘perfect ‘ they stuck with trying to either BS their way out of it or ,ironically , to deny they ever made the claim in the first place as in the Himalaya glaciers all gone by 2035 claim.
A practice they are currently engaged in over past claims that part of climate ‘doom’ would be an increase in hurricanes, when in reality the reverse has happened .

No no no it is subsidies the oil companies receive, the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, taxpayer funded, says so, so there you are all misinformed.
Do I need a sarc tag?
The CBC almost everyday is posting sometimes multiple postings a day, climate related missinformation leading up to the Paris carbon party. It is truly amazing what they are doing, the shear volume. It would be interesting to know who is behind this barrage.

Every time it snows I remind everyone of how it is a “very rare and exciting event”. I keep trying to sell tickets to see this but nobody seems to be interested.
It will live on in my memory even if it’s gone from the internet. I think I have a responsibility to remind people of how special it is when it snows, and snows, and snows.
I applied for climate refugee status with the UN so they could cover my all expense paid trip to Sun Valley, but I haven’t heard back. The situation is desperate here, it’s below freezing again tonight. The window is closing on this. It maybe even colder in January. So climate refugee only applies to warmer to colder and not colder to warmer? I’m wondering if I should lawyer up on this. Think of all those poor people who moved from NY /NJ /Penn/Con/Mas to Florida without any government assistance at all! But ” it’s worse than we thought” think of the ones who for financial reasons can’t leave! We must take action now!

I think I may have mentioned “children won’t know what snow is” around a dozen times in the last few days!
And with snow briefly settling on the hills today, it more or less proves the ASSERTION was a complete lie.

looking at the drop in temp of the atlantic this summer the likelihood of snow during the paris conference is fairly high ( note the use of climastrological terminology there) ,how ironic would that be 🙂

This is somewhat O/T but pertains to the expected predictions in the run up to Paris that 2015 is the warmest year on record, apparently UAH is not reading the current El NIno as pushing up temperatures. October 2015 was indeed a warm month, and many predicted that temperatures would remain high (and increase) for the next 4 to 6 months, but so far in November (first 12 days), temperatures have been falling back from the October figure.
ENSO is still showing up strongly in the ENSO meter, and, of course, it is too early to say how November will pan out, but it would be ‘useful’ if the November satellite data (which no doubt will be available early December) adds some realism and adds a contrarian standpoint to the claims that 2015 is the warmest year ever on record.
See: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.kT65AL9n.dpbs

This is an artificial debate.
The people who came into this subject late, such as myself take no great issue with the suggestion that we are living during a period of slight warming and slight sea level rise.
Both are almost imperceptible but detectable using modern sophisticated instrumentation.
However, what the hypothesis suggests is accelerating warming and accelerating sea level rise in response to a higher rate of emissions of CO2.
If we live during a time of a slight warming trend and a slight sea level rise trend – then obviously there is a good chance that in each year the temperature and the sea level will be by some degree warmer and higher than during the period in which these things were measured.
Since “Sea level reached 120 meters below current sea level at the Last Glacial Maximum 19,000–20,000 years ago.” (wikipedia) then the general public should be able to reassure themselves that humans can NOT be entirely to blame for these trends.
i.e. the trend predates modern emissions by some considerable margin.
And the current trends as measured by satellites are unremarkable, in light of the striking rate of change that is revealed in the last 20,000 years.
This message has not got through into the minds of the populous.
Most people that I meet are still bamboozled by the “warmest year on record” or “warmest decade on record” memes.
I am surprised that there aren’t any “highest sea level on record” messages.
Of course, so much information is left out of these messages that they represent deception by omission.
And let us always remember that had “climatologists” established that we were currently living during a period of a slight cooling trend then they would have set about generating alarm about that – and holding that humans were responsible due to particulates and aerosols or suchlike.
In other words they would happily leap on any train, and ride it in whatever direction it was going.
Of course, during the 1970’s some scientists did throw their weight behind an “ice age” alarm, so we have record of this process.
In fact that WOULD be much more alarming – since the cold periods have dominated earth’s history.
i don’t know how we can get the message out to those who are still tricked by “warmest decade on record” memes. Somehow or other we need to communicate a sense of the rapid changes that have occurred over the last few thousand years and how in the light of these – this age is unexceptionally.
Yes, there appears to be some slight warming. Yes, there appears to be some slight sea level rise.
But, so what? It is not evidence of human activity.
Nor does it tell us that CO2 is having no effect.
And certainly it does not tell us that we are experiencing or going to experience “extreme weather”
The truth is that it is all so unremarkable that so far it tells us nothing.
Much greater rises were occurring long before humans started digging up coal.
In fact, the period of fastest change seems to have abated about 8,000 years ago.
ACCELERATION of the rate of warming might be consistent with the hypothesis.
But even that has occurred naturally at many points prior to the arrival of climate fear.
And since the 1980s-1990s we see either deceleration of change or a steady rate with some variability depending on the source of data.
There must be some way in which we can get these simple concepts into the minds of the majority of modern people who, let’s accept it, probably can not read graphs.
I came to this topic with a genuine desire to find out what impact CO2 was having on the climate.
I can now finally clearly see – that nobody knows. And due to the politicization of this subject, I suspect that there will not be any further progress in climate science for many decades.
They have trapped themselves in a quagmire of lies, distortions and confusion. And promoted their topmost idiots into positions of greatest influence.
Wicked mess – is an understatement!!!!

Thanks the plot.
It seems likely that in the coming years, we will see to what extent the sun influences climate. I am hoping that there are no large scale volcano eruptions that may hinder the analysis of the impacts of a weak sun.

it would be ‘useful’ if the November satellite data (which no doubt will be available early December) adds some realism
When I used to monitor HADCRUT there was almost a linear relationship between how late the results came out and the amount of cooling. The massive cooling of Feb 2007? meant a whopping three weeks late – after around a week of saturation “the world is getting warmer” claptrap. So, it was clearly an orchestrated campaign to prevent any take up on the “coolest February for 14 years” (long since cherry picked out of the data!)
But now, it seems from your comment, that we’ll know that the satellites are showing exceptional cooling – just because we aren’t getting the results for the DeadParrotTalks

State funded “scientists” that make such indefensible and inaccurate predictions that are proven wrong should be forced to repay all their grant money and face charges for incompetence and scientific malpractice. These frauds are looting the public treasury and no one holds them to account.

It highlights the scurrilous efforts of the sort – mainly if not exclusively the political claque of liberal loons and Ivy league academia – who wish to alter the reality and who openly deny the truth, “children won’t know what snow is” – just, which crew – are in denial now?

This proves how important it is that skeptics save copies of these crazy statements and studies which keep coming up daily. Those snapshots are needed for the history books. The establishment is going to do some serious clean up in the future.

most over hyped low pressure system in the history of uk weather. this was the 5th time the met had forecast 40 mph plus winds for my area of scotland since the beginning of october. they failed to materailise the first 3 times and only a brief spell in the middle of the night on the 4th forecast. i know this as i was out fishing each time.
the actual weather versus that forecast for “the first named storm” was nothing out of the ordinary for a scottish winter. i can remember one storm that sank all the boats in elie harbour around twenty years ago. no need to worry though, this https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/file/aa6dfd04-d53f-4741-1bb7-bdf99fb153be/1/hick2comb.pdf is the definitive paper on scottish coastal storms, and no amount of data fudging will change the absolute facts it contains, ie , it was stormier during cooler periods in the past.

In the olden days of climate change fraud the predictions were short term and ridiculous. This exposed them to the risk of fact checking. In the modern era of climate change fraud, all of the ludicrous predictions are safely extended beyond retirement dates and expertly defended with taunts directed at the fact checkers. The move to daily releases of such tripe also helped support the volume-based argument of consensus and synthetic truth.

Will you please stop repeating this story. Please bury it as It’s sort of embarrassing.
My council was trying to get some snow clearing equipment – just to shift it from the paths leading to the local schools. We didn’t have any and the schools didn’t have any as “well, we were told we wouldn’t be getting anymore snow so we got rid of it as it was taking up space”.
A lot of small councils dumped their snow shifting equipment at clearance rates on the basis of this advice. It cost a lot to replace.
Big mistake…

“However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers.”
———————-
To me is so amazing while looking around and seeing so many blind ones.
You see the above is the basic undeniable conclusion of a global warming, either natural or anthropogenic
( as per effect of RF).
The winters should be warming, or be less cold as claimed, in a warming climate (as per effect of RF).
According to this guy there should be a warming trend for winters, as he actually believed in the AGW.
That is how it supposes to be and expected to be.
As that seems to be not the case with reality, then is not a surprise that such claims are deleted to “oblivion”.
Especially when considering that the latest approach on proving AGW is by expecting to observe in the future a considerable further increase of extremes in the summer – winter temps, the opposite of the claim above, when and where the winters should be colder or less warmer while the summers keep warming or be hotter, which by the way seems to be the case in reality so far to a degree.
So trying a new way to “prove” AGW through some thing that supposes to disprove it, requires that the old basic simple claim be destroyed and deleted to “oblivion”, as it creates a paradox and contradiction to the the new false and spin-doctored one.
So a simple possible fact that winters have being in a cooling trend for the last ~ 15 years, which actually puts very much in doubt any possible continuing GW (as per RF effect), either natural or anthropogenic one, is going to be used as evidence and proof of AGW…..and that requires the deletion of past statements as the one above, which clearly will be a contradiction to the new coned desperate approach…….and there is an abundance of such past statements and articles in the road to “perdition”.
Don’t be so surprised…:)
It is the AGW way….anything is possible….even full – proof insanity……..or foolproof AGW……..
cheers

Steve Connor “lambasts” the story because it’s not subtle enough. But he agrees with the message. He is also an alarmist, and just as wrong as Viner. And just as wrong, saying that the peat bog fires around Moscow were caused by global warming. Even the IPCC concluded that that was false.
If someone ever writes the history of climate alarmism, he will find layers upon layers upon layers of garbage.
Something like a big municipal dump.

Of course it was deliberate. You can’t use the heat waves and heavy snow fall we’re having now to sell the lie that temperatures have risen dramatically since 1998 if you have articles floating around talking about the mild winters we were having right around then. So you have to disappear them.
We’ve always been at war with Oceana. And he loved Big Brother.

I read the story at the link where the post says Steve Connor lambasted the original article that said snow would be rare. That article didn’t lambaste the original, it supported the use of the statement that said snow would be rare because you have to have brief headlines. It also supported the premise of the original article. I don’t know if someone else posted this thought as I didn’t read all of the comments.

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